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How to revive democracy in digital spaces

Why are our online spaces governed so differently from our offline ones?

Where is the accountability and collective governance in online spaces?

Where is the greatest opportunity for democratic governance online?

These are some questions at the heart of scholar Nathan Schneider’s research on online governance shared in his new book, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life.

In offline spaces—from local garden clubs to our court system—there are laws, checks and balances, structures of accountability, and (hopefully) due process.

Schneider suggests that our digital spaces reflect what he calls “implicit feudalism”—a design pattern based on top-down power from administrators and moderators, where “power is not exercised through conflict resolution, but through the digital equivalents of exile and censorship.”

The risk of being canceled and de-platformed and the fact that everyday users don’t have control over their data stems from the same root cause: the governance models of our online spaces are broken. 

How did we get here?

This week we explore the roots of online governance, why they’re ineffective, and the small experiments that could become the next models of online governance.

// From the beginning, the internet was different

According to Schneider, early in the internet’s history, there were two challenges that hindered the development of effective democratic governance online.

1. Cultural. In the internet’s early days, there was an anti-authoritarian ethos that prized freedom over collective governance. The internet was a space to operate un-regulated and to practice what Schneider calls a colonialist “homesteading” of our digital land.
2. Technical. Internet servers are the basic unit of internet infrastructure, and they were owned and controlled by individuals or companies who could simply unplug those servers if their power was threatened or if they were dissatisfied with how democratic governance was unfolding.

The dynamics of the early internet have translated into enduring norms that still exist today. It’s unusual to practice collective governance online, and the business models of major tech platforms give them an incentive to not only own the servers, but also to set the rules for how we interact on massive scales. Once profit-driven companies took charge of the servers that many of us use to find community, any practice of democracy online represents a risk to their legal liability and their bottom line.

// Losing the ability to practice democracy

Schneider’s own faith in democracy was built on the experiences he had as a teenager participating in political processes.

He argues that enabling people to find experiences with democracy online is crucial for the future of democracy.

• The understanding that the practice of democracy at larger scales is crucially linked to the everyday experiences of self-governance is rooted in a long tradition of political thought—from Alexis De Tocqueville to Mahatma Gandhi to the de-colonial scholar C.L.R. James.
• By operating in online spaces without opportunities to practice democracy, we lose the ability to nurture the skills necessary to be participants in bigger projects of governance—whether that’s in local politics or national elections.

“I believe in democracy because I've touched it. And when people don't get to touch it, how are they going to be expected to behave as democratic subjects in relation to national politics?”

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Enabling people to find experiences with democracy online is crucial for the future of democracy.

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// Digital experiments in democratic governance

Building the future of the internet “starts with the experiments—with people bending over backward to counteract the implicit feudalism in today’s internet and practice democracy at a community-scale,” Schneider said.

• Cooperatively owned servers: Social.coop (a user-governed Mastodon server) and May First (a bilingual web-hosting co-op creating cross-border solidarity between the US and Mexico) are two examples of cooperatively owned servers, where people collectively and transparently operate a platform.
• New protocols: New protocols like ActivityPub, Bluesky’s AT Protocol, and Project Liberty Foundation’s DSNP are shifting data control from companies to users, creating the technical foundation of self-governance.
• Open-source software: From Python, a programming language, to Debian, an open-source operating system for servers, there are large open-source software communities where developers can co-govern the code base.
• Blockchain: Blockchain is a technology that creates greater user control, where each node on the network has more sovereignty, enabling forms of distributed governance like Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). 

// Normalize democracy

It would be a mistake to think democratic governance in digital spaces is simple or easy. Whether it’s the internal decisions made by Meta or the committees of a bilingual server co-op, “there's always governance, whether you see it or not, and much of it is messy. It’s just that the messiness is not widely shared,” Schneider explained.

The distributed governance in DAOs has been critiqued because of low voter participation, but Schneider says it’s often the same in century-old co-ops. Whether online or offline, we need to design governance systems around appropriate levels of engagement and enable people to participate in ways that fit their lives.

The next generation of a more democratically-governed internet becomes more possible every time someone asks, “What online spaces can we co-govern and how can we bring the principles of how local communities solve problems offline into our online spaces?”

By understanding the potential for our digital spaces to be the places where we practice democracy, Schneider believes we can challenge the idea that democracy only happens in the halls of power at the nation-state level.

“If we start really being full citizens of our digital networks, then we can begin to shift the ground upon which the concept of democracy even rests.

On Thursday March 14th at 11am ET, Project Liberty is hosting a pop-up event with Schneider where he’ll discuss his book and how we can put democracy at the center of our approach to tech policy. If you want an invite to participate, please email us here.

Other notable headlines

// 🔮 The neo-luddites are warning of an impending AI apocalypse, according to an article in The Guardian. Should we start paying attention?

// 🪖 An article in WIRED explored how the Pentagon learned to use targeted ads to find its targets, including Vladimir Putin.

// 📰 The social contract of trust between experts and society is in danger of dissolving. An article by Deb Roy in The Atlantic explored how to address the decay of our shared sense of truth.

// 🦺 An article in Tech Policy Press argued why Trust & Safety is not just for social media, but extends throughout the web.

// 📱 Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms moderate billions of posts. An article in The Markup explained how automated content moderation works.

// 🌐 What are humanitarian groups giving up by using big data platforms? An article in Rest of the World featured a report that examines the intersection of big data and humanitarian efforts.

// 🗞 An article in Fast Company explored the implications of Facebook getting rid of its dedicated news tab during an election year.

// 🗳 Voting technology in the US is secretive and often expensive. An article in Undark asks, can an open-source, transparent alternative take its place?

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